We have had a busy few months in the BMRC with a number of short-term research projects.

We have had two College funded development projects, one on antibiotic elution form bone cement, used in hip replacement operations. This work has been done by Aimee Paskins, a SHU alumni, and supervised by Dr Tim Nichol and Professor Tom Smith.

Dr Rob Widdowson has been undertaking a research study to assess the influence of research in BMRC on the teaching of biosciences at SHU both from the student and staff perspective, supervised by Dr Susan Laird and Professor Nicola Woodroofe. Rob presented his findings at the university learning and teaching conference in June. Both of these projects end on 31 July so we will update with the outcome of the projects in the next newsletter.

Aimee Howard, a 3rd year BMS student, has been funded by BiotestUK as a summer student as part of a collaboration with between Dr David Smith, Dr Sorena Kiani from Kings Collage Hospital London and BiotestUK. She has been investigating the induction of secretory IgA at mucosal surfaces following treatment of an immunosuppressed patient with immunoglobulin therapy.

Final year Bioscience students Jodie Daniels, Amy Wilson and Josh Middleton have been undertaking short-term research projects to generate data to supplement publications for submission to journals over the next month or two in support of our outputs for the government's research assessment framework.

Ruth Thomas, a student who has just completed year 2 in Biosciences at SHU with outstanding grades, has been awarded a summer studentship from the Wellcome Trust to undertake an 8-week laboratory project on the identification of iron contains proteins in multiple sclerosis brain tissue and cells, supervised by Nicola Woodroofe.